this and that

Some days, the only thing to do is to clear the fog from your head with a walk on the beach.  Even if it’s foggy there- and doggy, as in dog beach.  So I did (or we did).

And when it’s time to get back to work even if the silk doesn’t want to sew itself and looks like the fog in your head and the fog at the beach, it isn’t. It’s just silk and it’s slippery and finally you manage it somehow even with your very lacking sewing skills and a crappy machine.  Not bad.

So when it turns out that you base dye it purple and discharge it, and overdye it with every color of the rainbow and it turns into purple haze, and ends up paying a bill or two (made 2, paid 2)-the fog starts to lift.  Color can always do that for me. Plus paying a couple of bills doesn’t hurt. Plus when you know that the recipients of the results of such hazy days are such kind folks and so thrilled to receive their pieces, the fog continues to lift.

And the garden continues to feed us and shower us with flowers, and the air is scented with jasmine, sweet peas and the baby birds have flown the nest- then we relax a bit.

In all of this I can’t seem to remember if I mentioned that I removed some eggs from cold storage.  Some silkworm eggs…   Nothing happening with them  yet but I’m still hopeful. It’s been about a week. Maybe they are not going to hatch. This is the first time I have hatched eggs from my own moths. Time will tell.

And I didn’t entirely abandon the vats this week. A little derangement occurred.  The 1-2-3 vat was quite cranky but I think I cured it yesterday with a bit of heat, upping the pH and some more fructose.

I also played around with some hana from the PR vat.  Was just wondering a bit.  What could one do with the hana… this experiment yeilded no answers. But it looked kinda cool in the process. Still I have other thoughts on the matter.

In between I needed to sit and do some therapy stitching as well as make a pile of silk flower broaches for the San Jose Quilt Museum gift shop ( I also sent them some ribbon packs and flower kits if you stop in to the shop looking for such things). On the recommendation of my son, I watched a movie while I worked called Melancholia. He loves Wagner and the film features Richard Wagner’s prelude to  his opera Tristan and Isolde.  Tristan (my son Tristan) loves romantic orchestral music and Wagner’s Tristan is credited with  laying the groundwork for the change of direction of classical music in the 20th century as well as influencing the development of film music. I really did enjoy this dark film about the end of the world as well as the galactic imagery enhanced by the music.  It had me thinking in moons, and the mokume I stitched while watching it became this-my shibori version of the planet Melancholia.

mokume meloncholia moon madness

I’m working on another shop update which will include an in-studio indigo workshop this June (only a month away!) as well as the coming online mandala workshop.  Gotta go!